


From Paradise, Burning

by randomlyimagine



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: AU where Foggy is the actual Devil, Alternate Universe, Gen, Identity Reveal, Supernatural Elements, Wingfic, because that entertains me deeply, but it's Foggy so he's still a sweetheart, the Devil - Freeform, the Devil just gets a bad rap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 06:58:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17617661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomlyimagine/pseuds/randomlyimagine
Summary: "The Murdock boys have the Devil in them"—pft. Buzz, nope, wrong, and Foggy would know.Not that he’s necessarily opposed to Matt getting the Devil in him for a bit,if you know what he means. But Foggy doesn’t think that’s what Matt’s grandma was saying.





	From Paradise, Burning

**Author's Note:**

> I've been vaguely thinking for a while that someday I would write a counterpart to my AU The Devil Went Down to Hell's Kitchen, where the Avengers incorrectly assume that Matt is the actual Devil. The counterpart fic was intended to have Matt actually be the Devil. But while it was an amusing idea, it had been done before, and I never really got anywhere with it.
> 
> Then I had a brilliant idea: FOGGY is the one who's actually the Devil.
> 
> So here you are. Enjoy.

“ _Be careful of the Murdock boys. They’ve got the Devil in ‘em_.”

Foggy almost snorts the first time Matt tells him about that line. Thankfully, he _just barely_ manages not to, because Matt is dead serious as he’s saying the words, and even a guy as unobservant as Foggy sometimes is can tell Matt has Issues about them.

The Murdock boys have the Devil in them—pft. Buzz, nope, wrong, and Foggy would know.

Not that he’s necessarily opposed to Matt getting the Devil in him for a bit, _if you know what he means_. But Foggy doesn’t think that’s what Matt’s grandma was saying.

\--

When asked—and sometimes when not—Foggy tells people he has a non-awesome relationship with his parents, mostly because they’d wanted him to do something different with his life, and Foggy had not been down.

Foggy tells people that his parents wanted him to be a butcher.

This is true, but only metaphorically.

Also, he only ever had a Father.

\--

See, the thing about Foggy is, he doesn’t _do_ the Satan thing. Sure, technically, he is the angel-that-Fell-that-got-labeled-as-Satan-by-God-the-Bible-and-humanity, but the whole Satan shtick is not his shtick.

Also, Satan isn’t his _name_. It’s derived from the Hebrew word for _adversary_ , because that’s one PR battle that Foggy had lost.

Well, never even tried to fight, more accurately. He’s never been the gathering worshipers type, and sure, he spent millennia pissed at dear old Dad (and sure he’s still a bit pissed eons later). And the whole reason he Fell was because he’d thought it was pretty Dad-damned unfair that humans got free will and he and the other angels didn’t, so it was a while before he had any desire to actually go around talking to humans.

Neither of those added up to winning a PR battle, much less one against God.

But still, he doesn’t think his Father had to go around outright _lying_ about him so much. Foggy’s only ever even been to Hell like twice, and both those times were before he Fell!

Sure, Dad’s BS plan had been to send Foggy down to Hell after he Fell to rule there as punishment and to keep order. But while Foggy’s whole thing is justice (he _was_ the angel of justice, before he Fell; God’s prosecutor, he’s heard himself called), free will is apparently even more Foggy’s thing. He assumes, anyway, since that’s what he Fell for.

So he did the millennia-old angel equivalent of flipping his Father the bird and flew himself down to Earth.

…After Michael pushed him down. The dick.

\--

Foggy does this thing where he lives among humans, most of the time, because being a hermit is _really boring_. He’s a social angel, okay? He was made to be among his thousands and thousands of siblings—literally—not to sit up in a palace or a mountain cave or some shit with no one to talk to ever.

Of course, only getting to talk to humans isn’t much better at first. And then there’s the disaster with the Nephilim, and well…the less said about that the better. But Foggy gets used to the idea, and Earth gets more interesting as humans learn how to use, like, actual language. So Foggy manages.

In the early 2000s, he decides he’s gonna go to law school. It’s not the first time he’s done the whole lawyer thing, but the law’s changed a lot since the 1850s. For one, the US finally abolished slavery, _thankfully_ —not that Foggy would have told anyone he was involved in arguing some of those cases if they’d asked, because for some reason when people hear the Devil agrees with a position, they tend to think they should take the opposite side. ( _So wrong_ , in that case. _So very wrong_.)

Also, well, justice is his thing, historically. He likes justice. Justice is cool.

He goes to normal college first, because why not. (Or rather: because these days, forging paperwork for grad school admissions is _hard._ ) Gets involved in student life, even though he’s like a billion years older than everyone else, because why not? He doesn’t sleep around the way he lets people think he does—seriously, he’s several billion years older than all the students, and sure he makes some developmental-scale-based exceptions so he can get laid _sometime_ , but developmental-scale-based exceptions means sleeping people who are not, developmentally, basically children.

But the clubs are fun. He takes underwater basketweaving, because he _can_ , and graphic design, because that will probably be useful someday, and he takes creative writing basically so he can vent by writing lots of “religious fantasy” stories about his Dad.

At least one of the Christian kids in his class goes to the professor and says they refuse to read his writing. Just because he called God an asshole, like, twice.

…Okay, like twice a paragraph. But still.

But other than that, college is cool. He glides through his pre-law major because, duh, _bajillion years old_. He’d be _offended_ if he didn’t ace his classes. He’d drop out of school. He’d change his (fake) name. He’d run away and go somewhere empty and obscure like _Sweden_ and hide out in a snowy cave that mortals can’t even reach, and he’d stay there for at _least_ a decade, until everyone forgot he and his massive failures existed.

Thankfully he doesn’t have to do that, though, and even better, his grades and community service work and underwater basketweaving club presidency are enough to get him into Columbia Law. _Without_ him having to use any devilish powers or otherwise fudge anything.

And Columbia Law? Columbia Law is the best, because Columbia Law has Matt.

\--

When Foggy first meets Matt, he’s feeling pretty awkward. He had not, actually, shared a room during any of undergrad, because he’d been able to manipulate the housing assignments to get a single room.

Foggy had _not_ done that for grad school, because he’d figured (like a moron) that he’d be fine, he’d have stuff in common with anyone at law school, he wanted to make friends and integrate better into student/human life, etc, etc.

It’s all very new, is what he’s saying.

And it will, Foggy thinks, probably be great. As long as Foggy doesn’t accidentally let his eyes flash red when he’s upset, or leave his wings out where his roommate can see, or say or do anything sufficiently devilish as to either make his roommate think he’s insane.

(He’s been mingling with humanity for thousands of years, you’d think he’d have some practice at not accidentally outing himself as formerly Divine, and yet.)

So Foggy’s first thought when he sees Matt is _shit, he’s hot, for a human_. Which he then proceeds to awkwardly express.

His second thought is, _oh, awesome, he’s blind._ It’s a completely non-sarcastic thought, which Foggy is immediately determined that Matt will never, ever find out about.

\--

The thing about Matt is that he’s a good guy. And he seems to think Foggy is a pretty damn good best friend, so that’s some nice validation re: Foggy’s periodic insecurities that wait, no, he really is evil after all and just somehow never noticed.

He’s Catholic, which is a little unfortunate, and has a lot of Catholic guilt and Issues about Religion and Evil, which is even more unfortunate, but he doesn’t know Foggy’s the Devil, and Foggy can only let Matt’s angst be so much of his problem.

He loves the guy, but seriously, _Oh my fucking God_.

Foggy is not an atheist, because he knows for a fact that God exists and the Bible is, unfortunately, true (though it’s far from the only religious text that is true, and his Father is far from the only God). But he tries very pointedly to live his life as an atheist as much as possible. His Dad, as far as he’s concerned, stopped having an effect on Foggy's life when He kicked Foggy out of Heaven.

Out of respect for Matt, Foggy doesn’t try to de-convert him. Also, because humans go to the afterlife they believe in, and Matt’s Catholicism is ingrained enough that if he stops thinking of himself as a Catholic, he’ll probably still end up in the Hell that Foggy was supposed to rule.

(It’s maybe the one thing that could make Hell bearable.)

(Not that Foggy’s going to go.)

(He seriously, seriously doesn’t want Matt to go to Hell, except that in Hell, Foggy could visit and see Matt after he died, because he hasn’t had such a close friend in maybe a thousand years. In Heaven…well, Foggy’s not allowed back in Heaven.)

(But he’s also not a selfish fucking asshole, so Matt’s going to get himself into Heaven, or else.)

\--

Matt’s blindness has three main effects of the contents of his and Foggy’s dorm room: the fact that the floor stays clear, the presence of the braille converter and braille textbooks stacked about, and, sometimes, the emergence of Foggy’s wings.

They were white, once. Now they’re streaked gray, black as soot at the bottom, tarnished by either the burn of the atmosphere, or of potent metaphor.

Foggy doesn’t think he’s particularly gray, morally, but sometimes he wonders a bit.

He did literally help a little old lady across the street the first week of classes, though. So he figures he's at least decent.

The first time Foggy brings out his wings, it’s about a month into his first semester at Columbia—just enough time to start to get comfortable. He’s investigated the sightlines from their window, drawn the curtains, made sure the automatically locking door is completely closed, and picked a night that Matt is planning an all-nighter in the library.

Foggy should be there too, but he’d begged off to study in their room, even though—as Matt had pointed out—he’s never half as productive in their rooms. But it’s whatever, because Foggy has his wings out.

He reads the same paragraph of his Civil Procedure class textbook for forty minutes straight. He couldn’t focus if he’d tried, because his _wings_ —

Look, it’s been a while since he’s last had them out, okay? Hasn’t pulled them out at all since he entered Columbia, because he knows better than to be reckless, he needed to make sure he scoped everything out and could make sure he wouldn’t get caught before trying anything.

He has devilish powers, and angelic ones, but erasing people’s memories isn’t among them.

The wings, a human would probably classify as one such power. But they’re not. That’s part of why it’s so hard to hide them, really—they were never, ever intended to be hidden.

Foggy was an angel once. Foggy was always meant to _fly_.

\--

The second and the third times Foggy brings out his wings at Columbia, it is in fact the same week as the first time. Discipline was never his thing, per se. But it’s the same procedure: alone, in his room, Matt gone, the door locked, and the windows shuttered.

The fourth time, though, Matt is in the room.

Discipline _really_ isn’t Foggy’s thing.

And besides, he tells himself, Matt is _blind_. Sure, the guy’s got some intensely good hearing, in the way all blind people do as a result of senses compensating for sight. But as long as Foggy doesn’t move his wings around much, keeps the feathers from rustling or brushing all up against his bedding, he’ll be _fine_.

Given how much times Foggy spends justifying all that to himself, it would probably have made sense for him to keep his eyes on Matt’s face to make sure that there’s no reaction, that he and his Catholicism Senses don’t somehow mystically sense the tarnished-Divine in the room, or whatever.

But in fact, Foggy clenches his jaw and keeps his eyes squarely on the essay he’s writing for his Contracts class (fun fact: Foggy does not make deals and has absolutely no interest in collecting human souls, for Hell or otherwise).

Just because he’s billions of years old doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to be nervous. Especially since, if Matt notices anything, Foggy’s at risk of losing an epically awesome roommate.

Foggy doesn’t look up until after his wings are out and settled. So he doesn’t see the confusion twitch across Matt’s face.

\--

Matt has taken to taking long, slow, deep inhales, when Foggy has his wings out. Foggy hasn’t noticed.

Because Matt Murdock can smell the feathers, although they’re without the oil that would be present on a bird’s wing, and they do not, to be honest, smell much like feathers.

They smell like the vacuum of space (which is to say, absolute nothingness) and the burning of stars (not that Matt knows that). And they smell like Foggy.

Matt knows they’re feathers, in spite of the smell, because they do still smell just the tiniest bit like normal feathers, maybe around the edges, and also because he can hear them.

Wings rustling through the air, feathers brushing across each other and cloth and wood—those are all distinctive and familiar sounds, although when Matt hears them, it’s usually on pigeons. Whatever these wings are, Matt knows, they’re much, much larger. But the pattern they form in the air, in his World on Fire, is distinctive and familiar. And they seem to be coming out of Foggy’s back.

Sometimes.

Somehow.

Matt thinks about saying something a dozen times, a hundred, throughout their three years at Columbia. But he doesn’t, because then he’d have to explain how he knew, and even though he probably should view his own secret as an equalizer (since clearly Foggy is _at least_ as weird as he is)... He can’t quite bring himself to do that.

So he says nothing, because otherwise he’d have to explain that he has super senses, and really doesn’t actually need Foggy to give him info on the space around him ever, and those super senses are how he knows that Foggy is some sort of human-avian hybrid.

(Part of Matt does wonder. He goes and prays on it, even, asks if maybe, just maybe—and if, if _maybe_ was true, if he might have a hint, a sign.

But the Incident hits New York during that first year of law school. And however much Matt might believe in God, with the proven existence of aliens on and visiting and invading Earth—well, there are more likely answers.)

(Though he does _not_ think Foggy is part of an invading army. Even if he does briefly consider it.)

\--

When Matt starts putting on a mask and beating up criminals in the middle of the night, Foggy doesn’t notice. Sure, he notices that Matt is gone more often, but Matt tells him he’s hooking up with girls, and Matt is disgustingly competent at flirting while pulling a total innocent act, and also somehow _always knows when girls are hot_ , so Foggy believes him.

And then they just run a law firm together instead of living together, and Matt doesn’t need to make excuses for being out all night anymore.

He does, of course, need to make excuses for the bruises, when they can’t be hidden under a suit. But that’s the nice thing about suits: they cover the vast majority of the body.

And Foggy—well, even after millennia among humans, he’s still not quite sure how they work. On the biological level. Not the birds and the bees stuff, he gets that, _obviously_. But humans are weirdly squishy and they have all these complicated internal organs and blood vessels and all this microscopic shit that could totally kill them if it gets messed up, even though it’s so fucking tiny.

So much more complicated than being a nebula of grace stuffed into a human form. Foggy doesn’t have organs or veins or nerves. If you cut him, he just kind of _glows_.

(He has also gotten really, really good at forging medical records, because it turns out you need them for things like college, and doctors? Those are a no.)

So Foggy can’t, exactly, necessarily tell when Matt’s failing to hide a medical concern. Or how serious it is. Or when Matt’s lying about how serious it is.

He also doesn’t have any Dad-given abilities to sense when people are lying to him, which is a shame, because that’d be a boon with the whole lawyer thing.

But since he doesn’t, Matt gets away with _kind of a lot_.

\--

Foggy also doesn’t have, like, Sin-O-Vision or anything. Thank Dad, that would be fucking awful. (He only ever thanks his Dad when he sticks a cuss word in the same sentence. It’s a principle.)

But he has seen a lot of people do a lot of horrible things, during his very long, not-technically-a-life.

Which is why he’s pretty sure that Karen Page hasn’t killed anybody.

He doesn’t tell Matt that, though, because well, he can’t exactly justify it. Although Matt certainly doesn’t have any justification for _his_ insistence that she’s innocent, and yet. But also, her case is an obvious loss, and they’re scrambling to get a law firm up and under them anyway, and look, Foggy isn’t a saint, okay, that’s the whole point.

But they take the case. And Karen…okay, she’s a sweetheart. Foggy likes her, and he’s glad that Matt didn’t listen to him and refuse the case, _okay Matt?_ She’s smart and terrified and Foggy’s pretty sure that under all of her tears, there is a vicious sarcasm ready to come out.

Then they somehow win her case, so that’s…a thing. A happy thing, but wow. Okay then, go them. Maybe they’re even better at this lawyer thing than Foggy thought. Maybe Landman and Zach will regret being so amoral that they had to leave. (Look, Foggy can dream, okay? If the Devil thinks you’re an asshole—well okay that’s not a super high standard, Foggy thinks lots of people are assholes, but still.)

Karen, though, is not an asshole. And she’s definitely better at paperwork and literally every administrative task than Matt or Foggy will ever be. And probably better at not scaring clients off than them, too.

Also, she agrees to be their secretary pro bono. So that’s pretty damn hard to object to.

\--

No one ever asks why the Devil goes by Foggy Nelson, because no one knows the Devil goes by Foggy Nelson. Or, well, some beings do, but Foggy’s siblings all think he’s evil (damn PR battle), and also literally are not allowed to interact with him. His Father? Pft, he hasn’t heard for his Father since Michael pushed him off the edge of Heaven on God’s order.

There might be some demons who know which human the Devil is posing as, but Foggy kinda hopes not. He tries to avoid them, generally. His reputation is tainted enough without the association, and also, _they torture people. All the time. For fun._

So Foggy, in fact, does not like demons.

He picked the name Nelson because in the contemporary US, it’s about as generic as one could get without picking Smith. And maybe he’s being paranoid, but he kind thinks Smith screams _alias_ at the top of its non-existent lungs.

The name Franklin is there to justify the name Foggy, however loosely.

And as for Foggy? Well he entertains some thoughts about his old title as the Morningstar, and morning fogs that block the light. But mostly, he just likes that it sounds weird and totally, completely non-threatening.

\--

The way Foggy finds out that Matt is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen? Yeah, Foggy _is not a fan_. Finding a guy you think is an evil asshole on the floor of your best friend’s apartment sucks, worrying that he’s _hurt Matt_ sucks, and then _finding out that he’s actually Matt, and also that he’s probably dying_ sucks worse.

Matt tells him not to call the hospital. Matt tells him to call someone named Claire, whom Foggy has never heard of, and he’d thought he’d heard of everything going on in Matt’s life, but oh yeah, _apparently not_.

Foggy may not have a huge, wild number of ginormously powerful supernatural abilities. But he does have the ability to sense the life force of human beings. To sense how close they are to going to Heaven, or to his technical domain (although he can’t generally sense which, unless it’s a very sure case).

And Matt’s life force? It’s wavering.

Foggy makes himself call Claire, because he’s stunned and confused and horrified and doesn’t know how to handle this. And then he makes himself wait.

One of Foggy’s only other powers: he can heal. All angels can, and it’s one thing that they couldn’t revoke when they kicked him out of Paradise. He’s not very good at it, even less so since Falling, but if it was a matter of Matt’s life…he’s pretty sure he could manage. After all, healing for angels is a matter of the soul. And Foggy knows Matt’s soul very, very well.

But he doesn’t want to reveal himself. Maybe that makes him selfish, or stupid; maybe he should just heal Matt partway and then when the mysterious Claire with her hopeful medical skills arrives, feign ignorance and tell her it must not have been as serious as Matt thought.

But he doesn’t want to. Especially when Matt has torn open some very, _very_ old wounds: ones inflicted by betrayal and injustice, ones that burn at the mere thought of betrayal, through lies or violence or any means at all.

Matt was his _best friend_. He should have _said_ something. He shouldn’t have let Foggy find him like this, half dead on the floor.

(And maybe that’s unfair, given all Foggy has never said, but Foggy’s wounds burn and burn and he can’t feel anything under the anger and the panic at all.)

And if Matt is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, if he was lying about that, how many other lies has he been telling? Because the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen starts streetfights and wins, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen does parkour, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen tracks down criminals and also is a fucking acrobat. And Matt Murdock? _Is supposed to be fucking blind_.

If Matt’s truly going to die…if Matt’s about to die, then Foggy will intervene. Of course he will. But until then…he just can’t quite bring himself to do it.

\--

Claire comes. Claire refuses to give him any real answers.

Foggy comes closer than he maybe ever has, definitely closer than he has in centuries, to revealing himself. And not to heal Matt, or anything noble like that. To terrify Claire. To intimidate her into giving him answers.

Humans, instinctively, know the divine when they see it. If she sees his wings, she will not think him a mutant or an alien or a government experiment or a hallucination. She might not know his infernal nature, immediately—Foggy hasn’t exactly tested that—but she would know that he was forged in the hands of the Divine. That he is older than the Earth, and will endure long after it is consumed by a red-giant sun and is melted down to its raw atoms, all life long since dust.

But scaring humans is bad. And scaring Claire, in particular, would be unfair. She’s seems like a nice, no-nonsense person. She’s saving Matt’s life.

And around her, Foggy can feel the crisp, gentle burn of a soul that has earned its way to Heaven.

Also, she’d tell Matt.

So he doesn’t. Sits around, waits for Matt to wake up. And when Matt does, Foggy takes his anger out on the person who deserves it. He questions and he curses and he flips Matt off and he leaves.

He’s burning, still, inside: the smoke and ash stink of betrayal. Of lies.

Of being denied a choice. Denied the knowledge and ability to make one.

And speaking of being denied knowledge, if Matt, in his Patronizing Fuck act, had known _every single time_ that Foggy was lying, what the fuck does Matt know? Or think that he does?

\--

What Matt knows is less than Foggy fears.

Matt knows that Foggy somehow, secretly has wings. Matt does not know if those wings work (they do), but he kind of figures they don’t, because they didn’t sound nearly large enough to lift an adult human off the ground and into the air.

Matt knows that Foggy sometimes smells, faintly, not of sulfur (because he hasn't been to Hell since before his Fall), but of ash (because reentry to the atmosphere will burn up even the Divine).

Matt knows that Foggy lies, a lot. About his hookups (Matt figures it’s a self-esteem-compensation thing) and about his early life (Matt figures it’s a self-esteem-compensation thing).

Matt does not know how much Foggy lies about his parents, because Foggy (partly out of respect for Matt and partly because there are some parts of his reputation worth upholding) makes a point of telling half-truths, wherever possible. Lying only through omission. Letting his meaning be mistake. Letting other people _assume_.

(It’s good practice for being a lawyer, Foggy eventually realizes.)

Matt does not know that Foggy is lying about having a mother, because Foggy never tells him, “I have a mother.” But he does know that some of his statements about her ring slightly false.

The ones about his father (his Father), or about both his parents, almost never do.

After all, metaphors are a kind of the truth.

\--

Even after Matt comes clean (is _forced_ to come clean) about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen thing, Foggy refuses to come clean about his Actually Being the Devil thing.

It’s a kind of petty revenge.

Actually, he strongly considers telling Karen before he tells Matt, as another kind of petty revenge. After all, he figures it’ll come out anyway, at some point, if Matt is determined to keep trying to get killed. But ultimately, even after everything, he still likes Matt too much to do that. And he likes Karen too much to use her as a weapon against Matt.

And then he has other concerns.

Because Foggy still doesn’t have any kind of Sin-O-Vision, but he has still seen many, many people do many, many horrible things. He’s seen them do it because they want to, and even though it’s the last thing they’d ever want. He’s seen what people will do to survive, and what it does to them afterward.

Which is why he’s pretty sure Karen actually _has_ killed someone.

Karen’s hands shake, and she shoves them under her desk. Karen twitches everytime there’s a stray sound, shoots up in her seat every time the door opens.

Karen starts giving people violent double-takes on the street. It doesn’t take Foggy long to realize that they’re all white men with dark hair and glasses.

(Once, she does that double-take at Matt. Foggy can’t be sure, given Matt’s apparent super senses, but he doesn’t think Matt notices.)

Then Foggy catches her sleeping in the office instead of going home.

He doesn’t say anything, because nothing in his background has left him good at consoling humans. But he wants to.

Then he catches her sleeping in the office again. Sees signs she’s maybe been doing it a lot.

And when she catches him, her fingers twitch, brace—into the shape of a gun hold, index finger on the would-be trigger.

That’s when Foggy is sure.

“Hey,” he says, as gently as he can. He thinks it’s very—whatever other issues he has, he can do gentle. If Marcie calls him Foggy-Bear, well, he must managing it at least a little. “I don’t know what’s going on,” and he doesn’t, in any detail, anyway, “but it seems like it’s pretty serious. You want to talk about it?”

“What—no, no. It’s fine. It’s nothing.”

Foggy goes and sits down, on the other side of a room, and goes to sit behind his desk, to put it between him and Karen.

Then he notices her tensing and drags it out in front of the desk instead.

Whatever happened, Foggy knows perfectly well that a traumatized woman is probably going to find a man standing over her far more intimidating than one sitting on the other side of the room.

Karen doesn’t want to talk, is scared to. But Foggy can be persuasive—so everyone says. And slowly, he coaxes it out of her.

Inside, he’s furious. But he doesn’t let her see that.

If she hadn’t gone and killed Wesley herself, Foggy might have done something drastic on her behalf.

After all, what is one pathetic, evil human life to the Devil?

\--

He makes Karen tell Matt about being kidnapped and killing Wesley, and he makes Matt tell Karen about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

Neither of them like him that week.

Neither of them knows what he is.

But Matt and Karen pool their intel and save everyone multiple dangerous “research” trips, and Foggy and Matt arrange it so that Karen doesn’t have to sleep in her apartment, much less alone. So it’s absolutely worth their annoyance.

\--

When Matt and Karen finally find out, it’s a normal day. Nothing to do with Fisk. Nothing to do with the Hand. Nothing to do with gangs, or master criminals, or attempts to bulldoze half the city and drive out all the poor people.

It’s a normal night, too. A home invader with absolutely _terrible_ judgement breaks into Matt’s building. Foggy and Karen are over, toasting to having more than one client at once, and about to get decently drunk and start throwing popcorn at each other.

Matt hears the thief break into the apartment next door. He gives chase.

So does Karen, because she’s an intrepid reporter now, hates when Matt leaves her out, and occasionally (in Foggy’s very private opinion) has both poor impulse control and poor self-preservation instincts.

And Foggy follows, because what the Hell, he’s way more unkillable than them anyway.

The thief runs up to the roof. The three of them follow, at varying distances.

Foggy shoves the roof access door back open to the sight of Matt and the thief, fighting against the far edge of the roof. The thief is far, far more competent in a fight than Foggy would like—and worryingly so, since Matt is apparently an actual ninja.

He’s running toward Karen, who’s watching them from the middle of the roof, when—

When the thief kicks Matt backwards off the building.

Foggy’s having Falling-from-Heaven flashbacks even as he moves, doesn’t think about it at all. All he knows is he has to save Matt, he _has to_ , so he runs toward the edge of the roof and, just before he gets there, snaps out his wings and _dives_.

Angels were made to fly. Nothing is faster than an angel. Certainly not gravity.

Foggy dives, swoops, catches Matt, serves up again, and lands on the edge of the building.

The burglar is trembling in fear. He has seen Foggy’s wings, and this man—the one who had tried to murder Matt without a second thought—he is Hell-bound. He looks at Foggy and he sees his fate and he collapses to the concrete, rambling and incoherent.

(There is a reason that the first thing angels say is _Be not afraid_.)

But Karen—Karen isn’t afraid. Or she is, and trembling, but she’s standing and then running, running forward to check on Matt and fuss over Foggy and make a lot of very confused exclamations that involve a lot of cussing.

Karen knows what is important to her, has learned it through fire. She knows that there may be consequences, but those are for after she has survived, and everyone she cares about along with her. And so she can move, in spite of the metaphysical weight of Foggy’s presence.

But Matt isn’t reacting like that. Because that reaction to the Divine—the awe and the fear and the bone-shattering _knowledge_? It’s invoked by _sight_.

\--

Foggy explains. Haltingly, slowly, with frequent sarcastic interludes designed to belie his nerves.

(He starts his explanation by saying, “Matt, Matt, Matt. My friend, my Roman, my countryman.”)

(Look, he was the angel of justice, not the angel of humor.)

Matt doesn’t believe him.

Karen backs Foggy up.

Matt is upset and asks a lot questions about God and the Bible and then runs off before Foggy can answer any of them.

Foggy is like 300% sure that Matt’s spending the time praying for forgiveness about being best friends with the Devil.

But luckily, Foggy’s Dad is a quiet fuckhead. He doesn’t talk to humans directly. He’s above humans, and a giant, annoying hypocrite about it.

Besides, being friends with Foggy won’t inherently tarnish Matt’s soul. Or else Foggy would have left after law school.

Foggy sends Matt lots of texts, during that period of disappearance. Things like _Come on, dude, I’m not evil_. And, _Seriously, what’s the most evil thing you’ve ever seen me do?_ And, _Because I’m pretty sure it’s the time I filled that box with all the free bagels at Landman and Zach before we quit._

 _Or maybe it was that time I cheated on my music theory final in college, but music theory is_ hard, _dude, and when I told you about it you laughed and said you didn’t hold it against me_.

After about thirty such text messages, Matt sends back: _I don’t know what you were doing behind my back_.

 _Way to be a hypocrite_ , Foggy texts, and hits send just before realizing that’s maybe not the most tactful tone to take.

 _Seriously_ , Foggy hurries to follow it up with, _I’m not into the whole evil thing._

_I’ve just got bad PR, Matt._

_I don’t even_ like _human souls._

_I mean I like humans, duh, ‘cause not evil, but what would I even do with their souls?_

_Well, most humans. I don’t like the evil ones._

_Because I’m not evil, Matt._

Matt doesn’t text back.

So Foggy waits until there are no souls within the confines of Matt’s apartment, and lets himself in. He wouldn’t resort to breaking and entering, except that Matt hasn’t shown up to work since The Rooftop Incident.

He chills on Matt’s couch and looks at cat videos on youtube for a couple hours.

Matt, obviously (now, at least), has freaky super senses that mean he probably knows Foggy is there before he even enters the building. Which is, presumably, why Matt doesn’t enter the building.

It’s okay. Foggy is settled in to wait.

\--

The door to Matt’s apartment opens at 5am. “Foggy,” he sighs, like the whole world has it out for him. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you,” Foggy says, pausing his cat video—which he’d made sure _sounded_ like a cat video, for extra harmlessness vibes. “Duh.”

“Foggy.” Matt sighs again. “You’ve always known I’m Catholic. You know I believe in God. You know my faith means a lot to me. And you’re the Devil. So I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

“It’s not like that’s my _name_ ,” Foggy points out.

Matt’s mouth tightens around the edges. It’s basically Matt’s version of a glare.

“Yeah,” Foggy says, “I’m the Devil, but I’m still _Foggy_. I’m still the guy who bought you and Karen croissants the day before you found out, even though I’m super broke, and I’m still the guy who got drunk with you and decided that the Spanish word for lawyer was avocados.”

“And you came and started a law firm with me, all out of friendship and the good of your heart?” Matt’s skeptical tone is, even for a trained lawyer, devastating. “Please. Is this why you wanted to stay at Landman and Zach? So you could keep working on their morally bankrupt cases? Why did you even leave that to come here, anyway—I don’t even let us defend guilty people. What do you want, my soul?”

Then Foggy sighs, but his sigh is as loud and overdramatic and drawn-out as he can make it. “ _Maaaatt._ I told you, I don’t _care_ about your soul. I mean I do, because it’s yours, but like, what would I even do with a human soul?”

“Harvest it for Hell?”

“Pfft. Hell _sucks_. I’ve basically never been there, and I’m sure _as Hell_ not subjecting anyone else to it either.”

Matt blinks. “You’ve never been there?” he asks, tone starting to give just the slightest bit.

“ _Basically_. Not since I Fell. And what, no pun acknowledgement? Rude, Mattie. Rude.”

Matt blinks again. “So you claim you’re not trying to seize human souls, or tempt mortals into evil?”

“Correct! I am not doing any of that! Like I told you, over text, like fifty times!”

“And why should I believe you?”

“Because you can tell when I’m lying!”

“I suspect,” Matt snorts, tone light, “that the Devil himself could manage to lie to little, old me.”

“You said you always knew when I was lying. By listening to my heartbeat.” Foggy does not, technically, have a heartbeat, but his grace pulses in much the same way, and he doesn’t think it would help his case to try to explain that.

“You’re the Devil,” Matt says, “why do you even have a heartbeat?”

Foggy groans. He loves Matt, but sometimes the dude is too damn smart, and also way too fucking stubborn.

Foggy explains the technicalities. He was right, it does not help.

“Look,” Foggy finally says. His considerable patience is almost exhausted, because Matt’s stubbornness is almost as trying as the Hundred Years War. Which had gone on a hundred years. Whereas he’s been talking to Matt for less than an hour. “You’ve had freaky senses this whole time. You’ve been able to tell when I was lying this whole time, before I knew about your super senses and thus theoretically could have hidden from them. And sure, Devil’s Advocate, har har, maybe it was a long game and I actually did know—except for one thing. The wings. I pulled them out in law school, like, constantly. I _know_ you knew about the wings.”

“And?”

“And you knew something was up with me that whole damn time. You had that whole time to listen for lies, figure out what I was making up, try and figure out what I was, and see if I was up to something. And you clearly came to the conclusion that I wasn’t evil.”

Matt’s frown deepens.

“Nothing’s changed, Matt. I’m still Foggy. I still stop the conversation to point out every dog we pass on the street. The only difference is that now you know.”

“I…” Matt takes a long, slow breath. “It can’t be that simple.”

“Why not?” Foggy asks. “Falling wasn’t my idea. I just wanted free will. And who hasn’t rebelled against their parents, hmm? I’m here working with you because I like you, and I met you because I wanted to be a lawyer, because I was the angel of justice once upon a time. There’s no conspiracy here.”

“…And that’s all it is? We’re friends because you like me, and you became a lawyer to help people?”

“ _Yes_.”

Matt’s face looks unsure, hesitant, in the flashing light of the heinous billboard, as Foggy generally calls it. “You _promise_?”

“Yes, Matt. I promise.”

Slowly, hesitantly, almost painfully—for them both, probably—Matt starts to smile. 


End file.
